Immigrant’s child challenges national education conference

About 1,500 people gathered for the National Migrant Education Conference in Phoenix this spring, and were stirred by the keynote address of Gonzaga University’s Associate Vice President Raymond F. Reyes – the son of a Mexican immigrant mother and a Native American father.

Dr. Reyes praised migrant educators for their achievements.

“We are putting our finger prints on their souls,” he said of educators’ work with migrant children, adding that if a society wants a one-year plan for prosperity, it should plant rice. If it wants a 10-year plan, it should plant trees. But if it wants a 100-year plan for prosperity, it should teach the children.

Reyes shared with conference participants what he called “blinding flashes of the obvious,” including:

·             What distinguishes man from other life forms is the ability to make choices and commitments.

·             What is in our head and in our heart is vital, and should impact our behavior. We recognize that there are some things greater and more important than ourselves. We should live lives of integrity.

·             If we have a Statue of Liberty on the East Coast, we ought to have a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.

·             We should search for what “activates our passion for the possible,” and recognize that many of the migrant children educators work with “need to be liberated” to achieve their full potential.

·             The 3 R’s of reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic are important, but equally important are the 3 R’s of relationships, relevance and respect.

·             There is a direct correlation between knowing your language and knowing your culture. He regrets that an educator convinced his mother that she should not speak or teach her son Spanish.

·             Respect for diversity is important. It includes recognition of both our commonalities and our differences.

·             Children know more ways to learn than we know how to teach.

·             Most Latin Americans from all different socio-economic levels know how to speak two or three languages, including the Indian dialects. Most Americans only know one.

·             The most important thing students can learn in the 21^st century is to have:

o       God love and a sense of purpose.

o       Other love and a sense of service, to include the excluded, and to respond to hate with love.

o       Earth love and an appreciation of our first mother.

o       Self love and an understanding of our own potential with the courage to move from the ordinary to the extraordinary.

Reyes describes himself as a “restless soul” who rose from a GED to a Ph.D. He credits, in part, a science teacher who bet Reyes $50 that he could show Reyes something he would not be able to explain. If Reyes lost the bet, he would have to stay in school.

The teacher then created a daytime observatory out of a 6-foot stove flue and a large cardboard box. Through the flue and from within the darkness of the box, Reyes could see the stars in the middle of the day.

The teacher asked Reyes to explain how that was possible. He could not, so he returned to school. Reyes is now the associate mission vice president for intercultural relations at one of the nation’s top universities and a founding board member of Gonzaga’s Institute for Action Against Hate. 

OTHER SPEAKERS PROMOTE MIGRANT EDUCATION

Other top educators who spoke to the conference, sponsored by the National Association of State Directors of Migrant Education (NASDME), included Arizona’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne.

“The education of migrant students is of the greatest importance because they are the students in the greatest need,” Horne told the gathering.

He said migrant educators “are in the vanguard, leading the way so we can bring successful education to every student, including every migrant student.”

He said the national conference is important because “the quality of education students receive depends on the preparation of educators.”

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), via video, told educators: “You have tremendous challenges before you. Migrant children and families have often been an afterthought in education.”

U.S. Rep. Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) told the educators, also via video: “Migrant children also have dreams,” but their dreams are more difficult to achieve as the children move from school to school and frequently face other obstacles, such as grinding poverty, inadequate academic English skills, outside work to support their families, and ill health. Schools need to ensure that “these children can capture their dreams, too.”

Several migrant students who have overcome great obstacles in pursuit of their dreams were honored during the conference. They included:

·             Marisol Serrano, a graduating senior at Weslaco East High School in Texas, who received an Al Wright Scholarship Award. She migrates each year with her family from their home in Texas to Michigan and Iowa to pick and sort blueberries and to hoe, detassel and pick corn. Because of her family’s migration, Marisol starts school late each fall and leaves school early each spring. Nonetheless, she graduated in the top 6 percent of her class with an A average while taking advanced coursework, including advanced placement summer classes through an online “virtual school.” She will pursue her bachelor’s degree in business administration and marketing at St. Edward’s University.

·             Ana Maldonado, a graduating senior from Economedes High School in Edinburg, Texas, who also received an Al Wright Scholarship Award. She has a 4.0 grade-point average despite migrating each year with her family to work the sugar beet fields of North Dakota. As the oldest of nine children, she also has to care for her family as her permanently disabled mother is frequently hospitalized, and Ana has provided over 200 hours of service as a hospital volunteer. Taking numerous advanced placement and concurrent enrollment courses, she expected to graduate form high school with about 30 college credits. “Life will give you surprising turns,” she says. “You might think you find yourself in a labyrinth with no escape, but at the end, the light always shines. That is what keeps me strong and motivates me to continue every day.” Ana hopes to study international business at Texas A&M in College Station.

·             Amy Sanchez, who travels with her family each year from Olmito, Texas, to Ohio to thin lettuce; pack cilantro, baby dill, green onions, beets and lettuce; and perform other farm labor. Nevertheless, she graduated in December from Los Fresnos High School in Texas with a 3.5 grade point average while participating in numerous extracurricular activities and playing violin in the school’s award-winning mariachi band. She is now studying at the University of Texas at Brownsville, preparing to become a teacher. She received the $1,000 Frank Kazmierczak Memorial Migrant Scholarship.

·             Charles Wesley of Granger (Wash.) Alternative High School, who won the 2007 National PASS Student of the Year Award. His challenges are described in a separate story.

·             Viviana Ramirez of Watervliet, Mich., who worked as a seasonal farmworker planting zucchini and picking apples, peaches and cherries. Nonetheless, she graduated from Watervliet High School with a 3.8 GPA and is completing her freshman year at Michigan State University. While participating in the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP) at MSU, Viviana has maintained a 3.88 GPA and was named the CAMP Student of the Year.

·             Mayra Loredo, daughter of a first-generation immigrant family, who lost her mother in a car crash when she was 10. The event “has only made every individual in my family stronger,” she said. Mayra graduated in the top 10 percent of her class while excelling in math, science and music. She received the $1,000 Carlos Martinez Kinnison Memorial Migrant Scholarship for migrant students wishing to pursue a career in the health/medicine profession. The scholarship was established by the family of a young Latino student who died from cancer before he could achieve his goal to become a doctor.

6 KEYS TO SCHOOL SUCCESS

Another conference speaker, the former president of Arizona State University, Dr. Lattie Coor, reviewed with the migrant educators new research his non-profit organization – the Center for the Future of Arizona – has conducted about what makes some schools more successful than others despite similar barriers and challenges.

The study, “Why Some Schools with Latino Children BEAT THE ODDS ... and Others Don’t,” compares 12 elementary and middle schools with mostly poor, Latino students that are “beating the odds” when compared with other schools of almost identical demographics.

Coor noted that in Arizona, Latino students have a high school dropout rate of about 50 percent.

“It’s unacceptable to have that large a fraction of the population not prepared,” he said. “A high school diploma is like a driver’s license. It is the ticket for choices later in life.”

One goal of the research was to remove the “excuses, excuses, excuses” that schools and educators give for not succeeding. The study showed that schools with impoverished students with language and other related barriers can still succeed.

“If it is possible for these schools, it is possible for all schools to accomplish the same thing,” Coor said.

Educators at successful schools, for example, didn’t let the fact that many of their students were English Language Learners deter their progress. “They just took students where they were at and built from there,” Coor said.

Assisting with the research was best-selling business author Jim Collins, whose recent book, “Good to Great,” makes a similar analysis of why some businesses achieve great success and other businesses facing similar challenges in the same industry don’t.

Coor said in education no particular curriculum determines a school’s success, but it is vital that all educators at a school work together in customizing a program that they are willing to stick with.

“If it is not owned, if it is not collaborative, if the teachers and the principal are not working together, it won’t work,” he said. “If a school doesn’t grow itself, it probably isn’t going to succeed.”

Coor said some schools have said, in essence: “We want to follow what they’re doing at that school,” but one school’s program may not work at every school.

Some schools, for example, have a high rate of parent participation, which helps achieve success. But some schools without active parents still succeed, he explained.

“We found the schools that succeed focus on what they can control,” Coor said. “The research says, ‘Control what you can control. There are no excuses.’”

The study did find six keys to success, divided into three categories:

DISCIPLINED THOUGHT

1) Clear Bottom Line – Not waiting for something to be different, but doing the best for every student under the circumstances.

2) Ongoing Assessment – Frequent in-school assessments to spot problems early and drive improvement.

DISCIPLINED PEOPLE

3) Strong and Steady Principal focused on the things that truly improve schools and who keeps pushing ahead no matter what the roadblocks.

4) Collaborative Solutions – Problem-solving is pushed throughout the ranks, not concentrated in a few people at the top.

DISCIPLINED ACTION

5) Stick with the Program – It’s not about a particular program, it’s about selecting a good one, sticking with it, and making it better and better.

6) Built to Suit – Intervention is personalized so it suits each student’s needs.

     The study concluded that all six keys were important in achieving school success.

“You really have to have all six of them,” Coor said. “You can’t leave one out. It’s not a recipe; it is a way of thinking.”

The study is available at http://www.asu.edu/copp/morrison/LatinEd.pdf and at http://arizonafuture.org.

Other significant events at the conference included the announcement that Francisco Garcia, director of the Office of Migrant Education for the U.S. Department of Education, had unexpectedly resigned from his post.

It was also announced that the 2008 National Migrant Education Conference will be held in Orlando, Fla., April 20-23.